Like Velcro: That’s how Kandace Rich describes the grip of cyphocleonus achates, otherwise known as the knapweed root weevil.

Frank Mand

Like Velcro: That’s how Kandace Rich describes the grip of cyphocleonus achates, otherwise known as the knapweed root weevil.

“Lay them on their back with their legs in the air, stick your fingertip into their abdomen,” Kandace said, “and watch them grab onto your finger. They stick like Velcro.”

That’s what “bug people” do for fun, she explained, but it’s also illustrative of the behavior the Friends of Myles Standish State Forest (FMSSF) hoped to see as they released these little cyclones this week.

They want these weevils to grab onto the spotted knapweed with a death grip.

Backtrack a few years to the beginning of this battle, when botanist and Friends member Irina Kadis was collecting examples of the many species of plants that are unique to the Forest’s Pine Barrens ecosystem.

The idea was to catalogue what they had, so there’d be less chance it could slip away.

Eager MSSF members began to help, sending Kadis pictures of species they encountered on their hikes through the Forest, which were then displayed on her website at salicola.com.

Along with the photographs, they added their comments, the plant’s location and, sometimes, questions as well.

Several people wanted to know the name of a charming little blue wildflower they’d seen around the Forest.

Like many invasive species that have found their way into our gardens, glens and forests, the infestation begins subtly, almost with a charm offensive, single flowers randomly popping up out of the ground to display, in this case, a slender pale green stalk topped by a spikey blue, aster-like flower.

But Kadis knew right away that this seemingly innocuous wildflower was no aster.

It was spotted knapweed, an invasive species that is native to Western Europe and is now rampaging through the western forests of North America.

After that first flowering it sends out runners just under the ground that emit a kind of poison that kills other, competitive and often native plants.

More than a year ago, two large infestations of spotted knapweed were discovered by the FMSSF in the Forest: one within the Quail Wildlife Management Area off Cutter Road and the other at the end of Southwest Line Road, not far from the Forest headquarters.

The Friends of Myles Standish State Forest immediately mobilized and, with state approval, developed a management plant to monitor and control populations of the invasive species by hand-clipping the flowers.

By cutting off the flower they sought to prevent the plant from entering the seed phase.

That’s when Kandace Rich, owner of Montana-based Weedbusters Bio-control, first entered the story.

Kandace heard about the Friends efforts, which by then had failed to stop the plant’s progress in the Forest. She wrote to them, offering her company’s assistance.

Weedbusters actually breeds bugs and specifically two kinds of knapweed eating weevil: one that devours the flowers and one that lays eggs in the seedpods of knapweed.

As the larvae of cyclophoneus achates mature, they feast on those seeds, leaving a hollowed out pod that soon withers away.

The effectiveness of using weevils to control knapweed is derived not only from the fact that they love to eat knapweed but because kanpweed is all they eat.

That’s a little known scientific fact about insects. They can be either oligophagus, polyphagus or monophagus. They either eat all plants, a few plants or just one.

During studies at Cornell University, researchers offered knapweed weevils more than five dozen varieties of plant to dine on, but they refused to eat anything but knapweed. That’s important because when the knapweed is gone, it would be a disaster if the weevils began to eat other, native plant species.

After they feast on the Forest’s knapweed, these weevils will likely starve to death, or move on in search of their favorite food.

At least that’s what the science says.

Nevertheless, biocontrol remains a controversial and highly regulated process that requires those who wish to use it to apply for a variety of permits and licenses, and subjects their plans to intense regulatory oversight.

So, the process of switching from hand clipping to weevils was slow.

First, the state Department of Conservation and Receation (DCR) – the folks who manage the Forest – had to approve the management plan and determine whether it would have any negative effects on significant historic or archaeological resources.

The project was also subject to oversight and approval from the state Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, pursuant to the Massachusetts Endangered Species Act.

The United States Department of Agriculture also got involved, eventually issuing a permit to move live plant pests, noxious weeds and soil for the five-year period this pest-management plan will be in place.

Yes, it will take years to eliminate most of the knapweed from the Forest.

This week, the Friends got the final go ahead; the weevils arrived from Montana; and Thursday morning a small group of pest control pioneers set out from Forest headquarters armed with a take-out container filled with 100 weevils, a narrow length of PVC tube, a few bamboo rods and a length of ribbon.

It was time to release the weevils.

The picture for which they posed is perhaps too clear. It should really be stained, maybe a tear in the corner, the color faded, a layer of dust over the figures standing, for no obvious reason, in a field pocked with outcroppings of what appear to be an inelegant weed.

The weevils, each no more than a half inch in length, are not visible.

Left to right, that’s Alexey Zinovjev, John Bescherer, Laura Troll, Sharl Heller, Irina Kadis and Paula Marcoux, posing on the first day insects were used to fight an invasive species in Myles Standish State Forest.

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